Comments on: Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of “Hidden Moments”

By: The China Blog Awards: Third To None! | A China Blog on Suzhou Expat Life | The Humanaught

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:28:33 +0000

[...] Best Language Post: Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of “Hidden Moments” [...]

By: China Blog Awards 2007: The Results Are In | Lost Laowai China Blog

China Blog Awards 2007: The Results Are In | Lost Laowai China Blog — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:11:48 +0000

[...] Best Language Post: Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of “Hidden Moments” [...]

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:13:29 +0000

These are all really good things to be doing. The problem for me is I stopped doing them a long time ago. Using notecards is fine and all, making them is probably the biggest obstacle.

But you gotta do what you gotta do, right? My Chinese has regressed in a lot of ways recently, even with a Chinese girlfriend and a job where I need to speak Chinese a fair bit. Why? Because I gave up on the whole formal study / note card thing. Thanks for the proverbial kick in the ***.

By: pligg.com

pligg.com — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:46:05 +0000

Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of “Hidden Moments”…

Mark walks through the steps of finding “hidden moments” where even the busiest people can find time to learn a foreign language….

By: Making use of "hidden moments" « My TESOL

Making use of "hidden moments" « My TESOL — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:37:36 +0000

[...] Making use of “hidden moments” 16 May 2007 Filed under: listening, vocabulary, reading — Hsiao-yun @ 11.37 am Mark is an English language teacher in Taiwan who’s learning Chinese (Mandarin). Recently, he blogged about a good way he’s found for learning languages. See his post here. [...]

By: Life In Suzhou China Blog | Adventures of the Humanaught » Blog Archive » Put Down The Chalk & Pick Up The Language

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:56:54 +0000

[...] planning to put into practice Mark’s good advice (”Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of ‘Hidden Moments’“) and also some tips gleaned from a Pick The Brain [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:49:30 +0000

David, multiple 7-11 employees have told me they were positive that all their branches stocked the paper, though in small quantities. As far as I know, that was true up until this January. They were taking a loss to do it, though, and now they’ve stopped.

7-11 is still the best place I know of to get it. There are four within a ten minute walk from my house that carry it. If you really have a hard time finding the paper, then try going to a 7-11 near an elementary school.

By: Prince Roy

Prince Roy — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:28:34 +0000

I agree with David and Mark re SOs and spouses: it’s not necessarily a panacea. An anecdotal take from my own experience in Chinese pedagogy: I’ve found that those of us with Chinese spouses and SOs are often quite adept at mundane communicative skills, but others without, while lacking in this area, obtain extreme proficiency in their areas of specialty. For instance, I knew one guy who would have trouble ordering a bowl of beef noodles, or getting the cab driver to understand where he wanted to go, but he could expound to the skies in Chinese about international monetary policies.

By: David Reid

David Reid — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:51:21 +0000

I also think the Guoyu Ribao is hard to find. It is certainly not in every 7-Eleven.

I don’t think that having a spouse or a partner who speaks the language you want to learn is necessarily helpful. I think for many people it is actually a major obstacle to learning a language as they come to rely on their partner as a translator and never have to put themselves in challenging situations with the language.

Friends are certainly helpful, especially if their abilities in your native language are not very good. The more friends the better!

By: zhou

zhou — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:12:17 +0000

give MT a gun, he would shoot, wouldn’t he?